Does Julian Baggini Understand Historical Criticism?

I am naturally sceptical whenever experts of one academic discipline step into another. Scientists often make bad historians. Historians often make bad philosophers. Examples of these abound. It's the philosophers, however, that wield a certain advantage. Because their field encompasses all fields of inquiry, philosophers are in a reasonably good position to inspect other disciplines even if they have little or no specialist knowledge. The entire intellectual world is the philosopher's playground. 

So in the case of The Godless Gospel, I am honestly unsure of how to take philosopher Julian Baggini's attempt at wading into theology and the study of the person of Jesus. This is primarily because Baggini is not commenting on either issues, but rather the ethics of Jesus and applying what he taught in a secular moral system. The first half of the book is dedicated to an in-depth analysis of Jesus' moral teachings (p. 13-178). The second half is his own version of the gospel story composed of what he retains from the King James Versions of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (pp. 183-266). 

Baggini is neither an exegete nor a biblical scholar. Because he does not claim to be either, his status as merely an philosopher initially works in his favour. Baggini is not trying to recreate the historical Jesus but to get at his moral teachings (p. 7). His comparisons of Jesus to other notable ethicists like Aristotle (p. 23) and Gandhi (p. 105) are welcome reminders that Jesus was a real human being whose ideas are not awfully unique in the marketplace of ideas.

It is clear that The Godless Gospel is not a haphazard effort on Baggini's part. Aside from positing the old Marcionite dichotomy between the Old and New Testaments (p. 140), much of his analyses are fresh and consistent. His observation that the Beatitudes represent tendencies rather than inevitables (p. 68) are a strong example of his often insightful takes on what Jesus said and did. His analysis of Greek parenetical terms like metanoia (p. 23) and basileia (p. 67) are also welcome inclusions. This, combined with the numerous theologians he has interviewed and quoted, shows that Baggini has done his homework.

Ironically, the greatest weakness of The Godless Gospel is precisely that which Baggini is wise to refrain from doing: engaging in historical criticism of the gospels and the person of Jesus. In contrast to similar books such as Alain de Botton's Religion for Atheists (2012), Baggini is not repurposing modern religious customs and rituals for secular use, but is instead trying to extract the specific teachings of a man who lived long ago and making them applicable for today. Inevitably this will involve some degree of historical inquiry.

I am confident that Baggini, an atheist, does not believe that Jesus spoke every word attributed to him in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. His own comments about the gospels being "written many years after Jesus died" (p. 137) and the "idiosyncratic choices" (p. 181) made by their authors reflect a basic understanding of redaction criticism (the study of changes made to the sources of the gospels by an editor). Indeed, Baggini concedes just one page prior to giving us his moral gospel that "we don't really know what the historical Jesus really thought" (p. 178). But this means that Baggini is not trying to answer the question posed by his subtitle "Was Jesus a Great Moral Philosopher?" Inadvertently, he is instead answering the question "Was Jesus as he was portrayed by the Evangelists a Great Moral Philosopher?"

Thus, Baggini's own question finds itself in a vicious circle, one that strikes at the very heart of his book's thesis. He won't pretend to be the historian, but requires the words of Jesus to make his case. We cannot be confident in what Jesus really said unless we engage in historical criticism of the gospels. But Baggini can't do that because he won't pretend to be the historian. See the problem? 

Baggini knows he is not a historian and wisely keeps his comments to the philosophical analysis—undoubtedly where his strength is. Yet I cannot help but think he is desperately trying to harmonise the gospels into his one "moral" gospel, leading to the creation of a bizarre literary hybrid of his own making. Typically, forced harmonisation is something looked down upon in the field of biblical studies by scholars of various convictions.  

Baggini might not think that historical criticism is important to salvaging secular ethics from the gospels, but in my opinion it is indispensable. To expunge the religious nature of Jesus' teachings is to eliminate the context in which it was spoken, written, utilised, and transmitted. It no longer carries the same effect that it would have had on the original audience and continues to have on believers today. Baggini may or may not be correct in saying that the "kingdom of heaven" is a state of mind rather than a literal coming kingdom (p. 67). But if Jesus spoke that in a religious context (hint: he did), why turn it into something that it's not?

In fact, there are some subjects where Baggini is forced to flat out change Jesus' teachings in order to make them fit today's context, seemingly nullifying the purpose of his investigation. For example, Baggini deems that Jesus' views on sexuality require an update (pp. 125-28) and the discomforting apocalyptic stuff (which, according to a great amount of the scholarship, was kind of Jesus' shtick), is totally abandoned (p. 147). This is far beyond the efforts of those who recognise the interpretive flexibility of these documents and have accommodated the conclusions of critical scholarship. Baggini's approach instead does a significant amount of violence to the text. 

In the end we are not left with Jesus' teachings, but the "spirit" of his teachings (p. 169). What does this "spirit" look like? As it turns out, it's most of what our liberal secular society already believes through its inheritance of the Christian tradition: love your neighbour, don't judge, etc. This is awfully ironic given Baggini's endorsement of Albert Schweitzer's classic quip that theologians are recreating Jesus in their own image to suit their preconceptions (p. 10). Hermeneutical flexibility is taken to its extreme in The Godless Gospel.

The only real opposition to the current status quo of secular ethics is posed at the end of Part 1 with Baggini's three main "challenges" (pp. 169-71). These were all quite eye-opening and genuinely compelling. Additionally, there is much sense to me in replacing the eschatological hope for the future with the secular hope of the here and now (p. 172). I've always found the hope for the Second Coming produces swathes of negligence and apathy especially when it comes to topics like ecology. But this is precisely my point. Modern concerns like climate change and biodiversity loss are unlikely to be something that was on Jesus' mind when he was preaching. We must accept the fact that his teachings are contextually bound. Baggini acknowledges this (pp. 82, 169) but fails to consistently apply it.

I must also criticise Baggini's exclusive use of the King James Version of the Bible for his version of the gospel. He says that this choice was made purely because of its poetic nature and insists that he has consulted other translations (p. 182). But is style really the most important factor in deciding which translation to use? And if he did consult other translations, why not just use to New King James Version instead? Most people—even those of us engrossed in biblical studies—kind the KJV a chore to read. If you really want to provide some clear and practical ethical guidance for secularists today, use 21st century lingo please!

In sum, I am forced to conclude that The Godless Gospel fails where other books like Religion for Atheists succeed. Baggini provides some interesting takes on Jesus as an ethicist and how we can apply his teachings in a meaningful fashion today. Nevertheless, the methodological concerns outlined above pose some serious problems as to how that application could actually take place. The sayings of Jesus are not simply idioms and phrases to be arbitrarily played with in the process of making our own personal ideologies. They are artefacts of religious communities. To ignore this fact is to not only marginalise the perspectives of those very communities but to ignore the many advances that have been made in our understanding of these documents over the last few decades.

It's always a pleasure to see an atheist discuss religious ideas in a positive light. That, at the very least, warrants The Godless Gospel a place on my bookshelf—make no mistake from my mixed review, it is worth a read. But with the historical and religious elements discarded as essentially worthless, I can only see Baggini falling into his own version of Schweitzer's old trap.