I was able to attend one of John Dominic Crossan’s presentations at Furman’s Pastors’ School this week. Crossan, a retired New Testament professor at DePaul University, has been at the forefront of New Testament scholarship for many years. He made a name for himself as one of the leaders of the Jesus Seminar and has published many books on the historical Jesus and early Christianity. He was prominently featured on the PBS documentary “From Jesus to Christ” which I often use when teaching Bible.

Given what I took to be his radical approach to the historical Jesus, I was curious to see what he would have to say to an audience of pastors. The presentation I heard was largely taken from his most recent work, God and Empire. His main focus was on the role of violence in human civilization and the way in which the Bible supports and undermines that culture of violence. He contrasted two notions of divine justice in the Bible. One is retributive in which God is understood to punish evildoers. The other is distributive, in which there is a vision of God offering equality to all. One of his tag phrases was “God does not punish, but there are human consequences for our actions.” He used the example of someone sitting down on an interstate highway. If they die, it is not because of God’s punishment, but because of their choice to behave in that fashion.

In the later presentations I’m sure he went on to argue that Jesus’ proclamation was one of distributive justice; that is to say that the Kingdom of God as envisioned by Jesus included all people and treated all equally. He further argued that because Christians view Jesus as the incarnate word of God, his vision ought to be the criterion by which we judge other biblical (and non-biblical) notions of justice. In other words, while there are two understandings of divine justice in the bible, one distributive and one retributive, one non-violent and one violent, because Jesus articulated the former, Christians have the obligation to view that one as authoritative.

It was an interesting, challenging, and humorous presentation. Look for a Discovery Channel documentary featuring him to play at Christmas.