I’ve been reading Richard Burridge’s Imitating Jesus (Eerdemans 2007 ISBN 978-0-8028-4458-3), a book subtitled “An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics.” This is a book that has, at its heart, a very simple argument, worked out in detail in a number of quite densely argued chapters. The key proposal is that both the gospels, belonging to the genre of Graeco-Roman biography, and Paul, with a narrative substructure, testify to an interest in Jesus that is about deeds and not just sayings. Therefore a Christian ethics that pays attention to the New Testament (and the key gospel genre of biography) will be about imitating Jesus’ actions and not simply following his teaching.
Burridge works his way through the material beginning with the historical Jesus. He is aware of the problems involved in doing this, but because he is only offering a partial picture for limited purposes, avoids many of the pitfalls. He focuses on the double picture of a Jesus who welcomed “sinners” and at the same time summoned people to holy living in what Harvey called “Strenuous Commands”. This is a broad enough outline for even, say, Crossan and Wright to agree as a core historical picture. At the level of more detail it begins to lose consensus. For the definition of “sinners”, for example, Burridge steers a middle course between Jeremias’ “people of the land” and Sanders “notorious and unrepentant covenant breakers.” (I lean more in Sanders’ direction myself.) This doesn’t, I think, raise significant problems for the overall thesis, but it does affect some aspects. For Burridge (and for the majority outside the Jesus Seminar circles) eschatology is key to Jesus’ vision of discipleship and behaviour. He also notes that in calling people to follow him, Jesus also puts himself in a significant place in his ministry. Both these themes of eschatology and christology (as it becomes) then become a major part of how he focuses subsequent chapters of the book, together with a treatment in each section of the major ethical material under consideration (which, despite the church’s current obsession, is rarely sexual ethics).
In his section on Paul, he both places himself on the side of those who argue for Paul having more interest in Jesus than is often suggested, and alongside Hays, Wright and others who argue for implicit narratives providing a substructure to Pauline thought. Just as, focussing on Jesus, he held together the acceptance of the sinner with the demand for holiness, so he notes the same tension in Paul’s ministry. The members of Paul’s communities exhibit, shall we say, fairly varied forms of behaviour, regularly not those which Paul encourages them to change to (often using the language of imitation whether of Jesus, God or himself). Paul, he suggests, is follows Jesus in his balancing of inclusion and demand. In fact, I think the imitation of Christ is a far more important and pervasive theme for Paul than even Burridge does, and far too easily overlooked, but that this imitation includes both mutual welcome of those who are different, and the call to righteousness is something I fully agree with.
In the following four chapters Burridge moves through the gospels in an order congenial to the Farrer theory, though Burridge retains Q as his working hypothesis. Here his attention to his earlier work on the gospels as biography moves into a much sharper focus, as he explores each in turn. For each, despite their distinctive emphases, he believes they retain an interest in the balance between the inclusive following of Jesus in his community, and the demand for righteousness. In each the picture is modified both by their christological emphases, and their particular eschatological framework (not least where they stand in relation to delayed expectations). He argues (in my view quite rightly and effectively) that the genre of biography carries the cultural expectation that the life portrayed is worth imitating, and that mimesis is a key to an ethical reading.
The place of discipleship in Mark, and Luke’s particular attentiveness to the inclusion of the sinner and the marginal makes, I think, his examination of those gospels by far the most persuasive. He also makes a fair case for Matthew upholding a similar view, although perhaps with a higher stress on Jesus as teacher, and less emphasis on inclusion. He does, however, rightly insist that we need to read Matthew holistically, and not reduce Jesus’ ethics in Matthew to the Sermon on the Mount. In particular it needs balancing with its bookend, the eschatological discourse which occupies a similar place near the end of Jesus’ ministry, and is a similar length.
When he comes to John, however, I begin to find myself admiring the argument more than I am persuaded by it. Yes, Jesus does command his disciples to imitate him, but he is far more their transcendent leader than their immanent exemplar. Yes, Jesus does appear to reach out inclusively to the Samaritan woman, and possibly the Greeks of chapter 12, but I cannot help but be more struck by the regular sectarian notes. It is, after all, one another rather than the neighbour or the enemy, whom the Johannine Jesus commands us to love. Perhaps, as with John’s incarnational christology, there is an inconsistency here. His words tell us that Jesus is fully human (and therefore to be imitated). His narrative portrays Jesus as almost entirely divine (and way beyond our imitation). Nor can I let Burridge get away with sneaking the pericope adulterae in here as a balance (which he tries somewhat diffidently on the basis of long hallowed tradition).
However, notwithstanding my serious reservations about the argument extending to John, I think he does show that as biography the Synoptics at least are relatively consistent (despite their different emphases) in presenting Jesus for their readers’ imitation. They are likewise consistent in portraying Jesus as both open in his welcome, and demanding in his teaching, a teaching that itself calls to imitation in taking up the cross and following. This picture in turn coheres with the pattern of Pauline pastoral practice. (Obviously it also coheres with the historical Jesus, as Burridge constructs his picture from these three gospels, along with most everyone else. The fact that I broadly agree with him doesn’t stop the argument being circular.) Even if Burridge is wrong about John (and his brief mention of, e.g. 1 Peter) the Synoptics and Paul are a pretty hefty chunk of the New Testament, and more than enough to invite the church to consider biography, act and imitation as essential parts of its own ethical thinking, and to move away from focusing exclusively on teaching. The teaching, as Burridge shows, is only half of the picture.
In the final section of the book, Burridge presents a very interesting and helpful reflection on the ethical use of Scripture. He takes as his test case the arguments for and against apartheid in South Africa. It is within most people’s living memory (unlike slavery in the US) and just far enough in the past for everyone to pretty much agree that the pro-apartheid readings of scripture were wrong, including many (most?) of those who argued for them passionately and with full belief in being biblical. In this section he looks at several ways of using Scripture (obeying rules, looking for principles, following examples, and developing an overall symbolic worldview). He finds that while each have some place, all are limited and in the end inadequate. Equally, he clearly demonstrates the perils of claiming the word “biblical” for one’s own side of the argument. He puts forward the idea that, picking up what he has argued for, reading together in an inclusive community which is defined by seeking to follow Jesus, may not offer a perfect answer, but (often drawing on one or more of the other approaches) offers a better way forward. In many ways it was the separate communities of South Africa’s church which vitiated their readings, because they were not able to read together and inclusively.
As Burridge acknowledges at the end, debates over women’s ordination and homosexuality, the hot button topics of too much Christian discourse, are the elephant in the room. He seems to suggest that here too, more attention to imitating Jesus practice of inclusion would contextualise corporate readings of Jesus’ strenuous teaching in new ways. (He also notes how little of the New Testament’s ethical material deals with the questions the church is asking, but says a great deal about many of the questions the church often avoids.) Although he clearly admires his work, he has Richard Hays’ ethical work in his sights on this point as on others as inadequate in its attention to christology, or even just the person of Jesus.
I have some niggles.Burridge has unquestionably read very widely, but he does seem to need to tell us so. There is far too much referencing and quotation in the main body of the text, sometimes in a tiresomely “he said, but she said, and then X Y and Z said” form. In fact, in the passages where he writes in his own voice with limited quotation, he is both much more readable, and often more insightful and stimulating. (He also manages with monotonous regularity to tell us when someone has built on the argument he has previously made for the gospel as biography. It may be unkind of me to say so, but I doubt there is anyone who has built on Richard’s work who he does not refer to in this book as explicitly having done so.) There is also, and perhaps this is purely personal taste, an awful lot of the academic “we”. In an age when popes and monarchs have dropped the royal we, I wish scholars would begin to do so also.
These are minor quibbles that made the book harder reading than it need have been, and will, I think, limit its readership, when its theme and argument deserve a wider hearing. Yes, I have some major questions, such as my failure to be convinced by the argument about John’s gospel. And surely, in a book arguing for the imitation of Jesus, there might have been a far more extensive and penetrating discussion of virtue ethics, and how they might look if framed christologically. But the overall thesis is both clear and well argued for. I doubt it will be a panacea for the church’s contemporary ethical struggles, but it does offer an important contribution to the ethical use of the New Testament, and one that could have a tremendously positive effect. This is a book well worth reading and pondering on.
written by doug
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