The Future of Jesus is not the book I expected it to be. There are only glancing references to the issues of sexuality and sanctity of life that so bitterly divide conscientious people. And Jensen puts aside the ugly doctrinal disputes that, in recent years, have distracted so many in the Anglican Church hierarchy (including him).
It is well known that Jensen’s views on these matters are deeply conservative. But he recognises that labouring them would not advance what he calls his chief aim: “to inspire widespread, adult reading of the New Testament Gospels”. The Gospels attest that the two prime concerns of Jesus of Nazareth were personal faith in God (repentance) and social justice on earth, in that order of importance.
Jensen sticks to these basics and in the process delivers a measured and incisive indictment of neo-liberal Western society.
It soon becomes evident that Jensen is not an anti-intellectual primitive or a rigid biblical literalist. He understands that faith and reason are “indispensible allies”. He appreciates the vital importance of free speech and religious tolerance. He lauds multiculturalism (“the new and different Australia is a wonderful place”). He denounces anti-Semitism (“utterly reprehensible, tragic and unhistorical”). He supports fully the separation of church and state, while recognising the crucial distinction between freedom of religion (a basic right) and freedom from religion (a postmodern idea).
Read it all (hat tip: David Ould).
Truly fascinating.
[i]The people who will disagree most strongly with Jensen are libertarians and free-marketers. Perhaps the most radical assertion in the book is that “the philosophy of individualism is just as great a danger to our true humanity as the collectivist spirit of Marxism proved to be”.[/i]
Wonder what some of the more free market commentators on T19 make of that. Nice to see the breadth of evagelicalism once again.
#1: Radical autonomous individuality is anathema to Christianity, since it lies about human nature (that we are not, fundamentally, social creatures who could not exist without God, family, friends, co-workers) and about Faith in Christ (that it is always and only an existential decision to believe, quite apart from the means of Grace available through the Church itself).
I believe that Pope John Paul II had the best evaluation and critique of capitalism (“free-market”) and one could add the quote : “capitalism is the worst economic system…except for every other system!”-[I forget the source} as a corollary to JPII.
Personally I believe the concept of Social Justice to be evil. It has been co-opted by the World to mean whatever society determines to be just. For many people the Golden Calf of Social Justice has become the god that they worship, even while ostensibly remeaining Christians. We should be concerned with acting as [b]Christians[/b] and not with what society deems to be justice.
Stuart (#2),
I agree wholeheartedly. Your quote (which I used myself in another place) sounds like an adaptation of Churchill’s observation about democracy. However, it’s fair to say that some of our posters (who I’m sure admire Archbishop Jensen) may be less than happy with this aspect (maybe it’s above his pay grade to make judgments about economic arrangements).
Incidentally, I’m not being notified of follow-up comments. Is this happening to anyone else?
Stuart,
The quote is attributed to Winston Churchill.
The exact quote (as best as my research tells me) is:
“Democracy is the worst form of government, save all those tried before”
The book’s potentially broad appeal lies in its capacity to confound expectations.
For me this is a poor selling point, and one I would not want as an author. It makes the focus more about the author and what one had thought about him more than about the ideas he presents. It also implicitly says that more people will find this book attractive because they will find they agree with it more than they thought they would, as if the purpose of a book was to agree with its readers.
I listened to the lectures on the net when they were first broadcast. They were very good. Jensen is an infinitely better communicator than Rowan Williams, and completely orthodox in the classical Anglican sense. An exposition of Christology, the Kingdom of God and the role of the Christian faith in an empty materialist, secular society, where greed, inequality, marital breakdown, abortion and sexual chaos reign (i.e. modern Australia).
The review is of the kind that tells you more about the reviewer and his world than the contents of the book. The Sydney Morning Herald is rather like a Down Under version of the NYT – smug (but for how long?) in its liberal self-assurance and tone-deaf to Christian faith. But at least this reviewer learned a few things.