Chapter 18, "On Trial"

I now continue my investigation-in-reverse- chapter-order of Albert Nolan's spiritually challenging book Jesus before Christianity. My last installment, Chapter 19, "Faith in Jesus," Part 2, found me at a loss to figure out how to fit Nolan's central motif of compassion-vs.-catastrophe into today's reality. Before I discuss the next-to-last chapter of his book, "On Trial," I'd like to take another crack at that.

Nolan's central thesis is that Jesus preached a radical change of heart as the only thing which could ward off a looming catastrophe, in his time, and lead instead to the kingdom of God.

The catastrophe which Jesus prophesied was the Jews' eviction from their homeland as well as the fall of their Temple in Jerusalem.

The radical change of heart which was needed among the Jews of that time to avert this pending catastrophe, Jesus preached, was compounded of faith, hope, and compassion. Compassion for and solidarity with not only those who are like us but also those who are not — the poor, the afflicted, the marginalized, all of whom are called sinners; and our so-called enemies — would make God's kingdom come instead of the prophesied destruction. That this was so was a matter of faith and hope: faith had the power to justify our hope and bring about the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom didn't come, though. Destruction did. In an earlier chapter of the book Nolan asserts:

Jesus had not been mistaken; he had failed, or rather the people had failed him. A unique opportunity had been lost. But it was by no means the end. There would be another chance and still another because the "kingdom" of God will come in the end — God will have the last word. (p. 108)

Another chance, and another, and another ... and today we still have a choice between the compassionate kingdom and the coming catastrophe. But how?

In my previous post I suggested the coming catastrophe has to do with Islamic terrorism, but it escaped me how a change of heart on our part might help to avert it. On further consideration, however, various ways present themselves. I'll discuss some of them after I deal with the "On Trial" chapter, inasmuch as it seems we are presently on trial.


On its face, Nolan's chapter 18 appears to be about the trial of Jesus at the hands of the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, with the collaboration of Caiaphas and the leaders of the Jewish Temple. But it turns out that those who were really on trial include Pilate, Caiaphas, Jesus' disciples ... as well as us Jesus, and Jesus.

The chapter divides into two halves. In the first, Nolan seems to delve into pointless minutiae about exactly which of a raft of possible charges were actually laid against Jesus, by whom, and according to what ulterior motives. Who was more to blame, Pilate and the Romans or Caiaphas and the Jews? What were their respective intentions?

And what were the intentions of the Gospel writers who documented the trial of Jesus? Their combined accounts of Jesus' persecution today seem to us "muddled and confused" (see p. 153). Says Nolan of the Christian evangelists:

Their intention was not to deceive or to twist the historical facts. Their intention was to help the reader to understand what really happened despite all appearances. (p. 154)

Today, we might call this "investigative journalism," but it was more. The early Christians were committed to a "despite-all-appearances" worldview, since "appearances" had it that Jesus was dead. And so:

On the surface of it the Romans were to blame but the truth of it was that the Jews were more guilty. There is no anti-semitism here, nor is there a prejudice in favor of Rome, only disappointment. The truth of the matter is that Jesus appealed to a particular nation [the Jews of Palestine] at a particular time [the 1st century] and that nation rejected him as most other people might well have done in the circumstances. (p. 154)


Accordingly, Nolan pores over the evidence in the Gospel accounts to try to see, in effect, "What did Pilate and Caiaphas know about Jesus and when did they know it?" Answer: unclear. Each of Jesus' accusers probably knew something about Jesus before acting as he did ... but only just enough to recognize his threat, not his truth.

For Pilate, the threat was to his power. He was apparently a control-mad sadist, genocidally jealous of any challenge to his hegemony. He didn't understand that Jesus' challenge was not one of armed insurrection, à la the Zealots and other whom he also persecuted. But he knew Jesus' movement was a danger to Roman rule.

For the high priest Caiaphas and his associates, the challenge was to their status as privileged collaborators with Pilate. If they did not eliminate Jesus, Roman reprisals would destroy their sinecure. Out of expediency, says Nolan, either they initiated Jesus' persecution on their own, or they responded to Pilate's call to (in modern parlance) extradite Jesus.

Thus were two false gods, power and status, implicated in Jesus' betrayal. There was also a third, money. The Romans extorted taxes and tribute money from the Jews. And the priests had a cozy arrangement with the profiteering money-changers in the Temple courtyard.


So Jesus was brought to trial before Pilate ... and the second half of Nolan's "On Trial" chapter begins. In it Nolan shows how Jesus, basically by remaining silent and offering no substantive reply to any of the charges, ended up "putting everyone else to the test" (p. 160).

Their words were turned back at them, and they condemned themselves out of their own mouths. Pilate, firstly, was found ... guilty of a lack of interest in the truth ... . Caiaphas and his associates were even more guilty [for not having] gone to the trouble of finding out more about Jesus ... . (pp. 160-161)

But also being put to the test of their "willingness to die with him for the sake of humankind" (p. 161) were Jesus' disciples themselves. "But Judas betrayed him, Peter denied him and the rest fled."

And Jesus himself was put to the test:

He sweated blood over it ... [and] alone was able to accept the challenge of the hour. It set him above everyone else as the silent truth that judges every human being. Jesus died alone as the only person who had been able to survive the test. Everyone else failed and yet everyone else was given another chance. (pp. 161-162)

So, implicitly, we today are also the ones being put to the test:

The history of Christianity is the history of those who came to believe in Jesus and who were inspired to take up the challenge of his death — in one way or another.

Seeking not to be put to the test is, per Nolan, "the literal meaning of the prayer: 'Lead us not into temptation'." The temptation or ultimate test is not something that Jesus wanted for anyone: "He had always taught his disciples to hope and pray that it would not come to this [i.e., Jesus' persecution], that God would not bring them to the test or trial" (p. 161).


In fact, it seems paradoxical to claim that, by God's grace, such tests might be avoided, and also to realize that this particular test of Jesus' trial and execution was (at least in hindsight) inevitable.

The only imaginable resolution to the paradox is to recognize that the other catastrophe Jesus predicted, the imminent fall of the Jewish nation, could have been averted by people's faith in the coming of the compassionate kingdom of God. That was the core of what Jesus taught his fellow Jews.

Projecting Jesus' message for Jews onto the world at large: universal solidarity among all humans is the way to avert the test, so as not to be "led into temptation."


Thus do the Gospels give us a template, as it were, for understanding our current situation. Before I attempt to elaborate on that notion, I'd better first warn that what I'm about to say is sketchy and intuitive. I feel quite the inadequate prophet, having, as I do, nothing like the clarity of vision Jesus had when he predicted the fall of his nation and its Temple.

It seems to me that the catastrophe we face is much more murky. It has something to do with terrorism abroad, emanating mostly from Islamic sources — I can see that much, but I have no idea how it might manifest itself as a specific, definitive catastrophe.

As I said in Chapter 19, "Faith in Jesus," Part 2, nor can I give chapter and verse on how any sort of compassion-favoring change of heart on our part would help. Yet in general it seems clear that compassion — fellow-feeling for all our "neighbors" — is the basis for social solidarity. We obviously will need solidarity to ward off the terrorist threat.

How might that work? Well, with greater solidarity we might be able to summon up the political will to do certain things that pundits and commentators across the ideological spectrum have called for, but bemoaned the difficulty of passing.

For example, voices from the left, center, and right have been raised in favor of undertaking to make the U.S. "energy independent," thereby weaning it from foreign oil. It would take a lot of planning — à la what we did in the 1960s to get to the moon — and a lot of sacrifice. Yet few doubt it could be done ... if our leaders led us in that direction and we followed.

At the same time, such sensible proposals are (having been made) typically immediately pronounced D.O.A. Why? Because it seems the necessary political solidarity isn't available.


The very same thing happens when the subject of re-instituting a military draft is brought up. A lot of smart people think a draft is needed to get enough troops into the armed forces while not busting the budget and ballooning the deficit. Plus it would (if implemented properly) distribute the burden of fighting in places like Iraq more fairly among ethnic groups and economic strata. Yet almost no one thinks such a sensible proposal stands a ghost of a chance in today's sacrifice-averse political climate.

A third example of where we need greater willingness to abandon expediency and face the truth concerns proposals made by reputable, knowledgable experts to the effect that the Senate ought to reassert its constitutional prerogative and actually require American wars to be declared, by the Senate itself, as in the distant past. Having the legislative branch vet a President's war-making intentions in advance would help us stay together, politically, after the fighting begins. If it begins, that is — the Senate would have to step up to the plate and deny the President his or her war, if it looks to be a hopeless muddle in the making.

None of this will happen in exactly the way it should, however, if we don't stop sniping at one another and take back the moral high ground of "love thy neighbor." If cynics say plans for energy independence are excuses to fatten the coffers of privileged corporations, kiss that thrust goodbye. If black folks insist a reinstated draft is a clever way to force more African Americans into harm's way, fugeddaboudit. If neo-conservatives say America's muscle is at risk and shoot down Senate initiatives to declare wars or never fight them, there's no chance for change.


We have to have faith that cooperation — as in "love thy neighbor" — is the moral high ground and will work. And we have to live by that faith even when it seems like the height of folly.

Note that compassion as Jesus taught it is also fellow-feeling for our "enemies," whom Jesus instructs us to "love." If we were indeed more compassionate in this way, perhaps we'd not find it so hard to pass laws forbidding the torture and abuse of prisoners we're holding offshore, detainees not now covered by the Geneva Convention.

Still, those of our leaders who refuse to zero out the torture option do have a case. If we don't subject the "enemy" to mental and physical abuse, we might be missing an opportunity to squeeze out much needed intelligence information. Wouldn't that be, in fact, the height of foolishness?

That's where faith really comes into play. The template of truth which Albert Nolan lays out for us says that we will paradoxically avoid catastrophe only by eschewing, in the name of total compassion, exactly the "foolish" things our reason tells us must be done.


That, at any rate, is a sketch of how investing our souls in a commitment to compassion, to a righteousness that would please the Jesus of Nolan's book, might begin shifting our future away from a catastrophe of terrorism.

But, clearly, we'd have to follow it up with such a degree of righteousness as to convince even our enemies.

I'm put in mind of the story told in the movie Gandhi. Mohandas K. Gandhi, in his compassion, saw an India poor, starving, and desperate for independence from the British crown ... but powerless to gain it. He realized that, foolish as it might seem, the only way to oust the colonials and gain home rule was to adjure the use of violent force.

Gandhi's movement of non-violence even — after a struggle lasting decades — gained the grudging respect of some of the English overlords. In part, it was because they realized that they were not being demonized, but were being treated honestly and fairly by Indians in the gradually succeeding movement. Finally the time came when the British simply felt moved to hand over their power to the Indians, as if conceding a well-played cricket match.

In a nutshell, the righteousness of Gandhi's cause and methodology was not lost on the so-called enemy. At the end of the day, compassion, faith, and hope proved stronger than complacency, expediency, and the traditional instruments of power.

Could we do that? Could we "fight" terrorism with righteous compassion, faith, and hope, and win? Could we convince our enemies that we indeed love them, and all people, and that we are not the infidel brutes whom they think we are?

Are we "on trial" here? Are we being "put to the test" which Jesus taught us to pray we would never be put to? Is compassion our only ticket away from catastrophe and toward the kingdom of God?