Lecture 24 Notes

How Would We Treat Jesus?

 

Plan of the Lecture

I.    Introduction to Ivan's Challenge
II.   "The Grand Inquisitor" and "Jesus of Montreal"

I.    Introduction to Ivan's Challenge

A.   Dostoevsky Asks: How Would We Treat Jesus if He Came Again?

  • The central question in The Idiot is obviously central to "The Grand Inquisitor".  It is by exploring this question that Ivan presses his challenge.
  • This same question is obviously central to "Jesus of Montreal".
  • Consider the following. 
  1. The movie raises the same questions about human freedom that the story does.
  2. The answer given in the story and the movie is essentially the same.
  3. Both "Jesus of Montreal" and "Grand Inquisitor" reach same troubling conclusion about us.
  4. The challenge is to convince you of this, to convince you that the conclusion is plausible.

B.   Why is Dostoevsky’s Question a Challenge?

  • It raises deeply disturbing questions about organized religion, about the purposes religion serves, the needs it meets and the motives of those who provide and organize it.
  • It thereby raises profoundly disturbing questions about us:
  1. Do we need or want religion?
  2. Are we capable of doing right thing, of treating Jesus properly?
  3. Are we beings capable of moral progress?
  • Often people think we have progressed a lot.  We have control over environment, the physical world, and the genetic world.  We have enormous advances in public health and life expectancy.  Democratic political culture has taken root here and it is spreading.  Whatever is true elsewhere in world, we in rich liberal democracies of the west think we, our lives, our culture, show that moral progress possible.
  • The challenge of the story and the movie is this--have we misread the evidence?

 

II.   "The Grand Inquisitor" and "Jesus of Montreal"

A.   Story and Movie Invite us to Consider 3 Times, 2 Time Intervals

  • Times:
  1. The time in which the Gospels set.
  2. 15th century Seville: "that terrible period of the Inquisition".
  3. 20th century Montreal: rich, media-centered, over-sexed.
  •   We are forced to ask the following questions:
  1. How much does either the second or third coming differ from
  2. How much did we improve between the first coming and the second, between the time when we watch heretics being burnt and the time when we gather to watch whatever movie industry puts out?
  3. How much moral progress has there been?
  4. How much difference have 2000 years of Christianity made?
  •   "The Grand Inquisitor" and "Jesus of Montreal" Answer:
  1. 2000 years ago, we crucified an innocent man and distorted his message.  500 years ago, Dostoevsky says, we would have burned him.  Now, the movie suggests, we’d do roughly same thing if given the chance.
  2. If anything, "The Grand Inquisitor" suggests that we’ve gotten worse.  "The population rushes towards him as if propelled by some irresistible force; it surrounds, throngs, and presses around, it follows him."  "Children strew flowers along his path and sing to him, 'Hosannah!'". (This is reminiscent of what gospel scene?)  "To-morrow I will condemn and burn thee on the stake, as the most wicked of all the heretics; and that same people, who to-day were kissing thy feet, to-morrow at one bend of my finger, will rush to add fuel to thy funeral pyre."  Consider the time interval between adulation and execution.

 

B.   Making the Case:

  • To see how the case against us--against freedom--is made, we have to see why Grand Inquisitor arrests Jesus.
  • To see why the Grand Inquisitor arrests Jesus, it helps to see why the priest stops the play.

 

C.   Parallels Between Jesus and Daniel Coulombe:

Daniel Jesus
 (1) begins public life at 30  (1) begins public life at 30
 (2) gathering of the players, including Mirielle Martin  (2) call of the disciples, including Matthew and Mary Magdelen
 (3) refuses wine to console himself after priest protests play  (3) refuses wine as an anaesthetic on cross
 (4) eats, drinks, talks with friends  (4) ministry is eating, drinking, and talk
 (5) calls forth something special from ordinary people  (5) calls forth something from ordinary people
 (6) confronts religious authorities  (6) confronts religious authorities
 (7) Mirielle gives bubble bath  (7) anointing with oil worth 40 pieces
 (8) breaks up commercial scene, whips producer with cords  (8) cleansing of temple, disperses money-lenders with whip
 (9) silent at his trial  (9) silent at trial before Pilate
 (10) women with him to the end  (10) two Marys at foot of cross
 (11) taken to Jewish hospital  (11) Joseph of Arimethea gives tomb
 (12) physical resurrection  (12) physical resurrection
  


D.   Back to the case against us, the case against human freedom

  1. One might think he does so because either (i) doesn’t know who Jesus is or (ii) the Grand Inquisitor likes wealth and power and sees Jesus as a threat.
  2. Alyosha raises both of these.  We must dismiss (i), this misses the genius of the story.  Alyosha raises (ii) we will return to this point at end.  For now, the objection is mistaken, it misses point of story.
  1. At the end of first performance we get this message: life is simple, we should love one another.
  2. The play urges people to think for themselves, to rely on themselves.
  3. The play thereby engenders confusion in minds of the people.
  4. The play should be saccharine performance leaving things as they are.
  1. If Jesus preached again, it would only confuse people.
  2. 1500 years ago, Jesus preached a message of simplicity and love that people didn’t understand.
  3. He replaced an "old and wise law" that regulated every aspect of life with a law of simplicity and love (see Matthew 6:25ff.).
  4. The Grand Inquisitor and his ilk had to take control for good of the people.
  1. In all three cases, Jesus is said to be naive, a fool who doesn’t know what people are really like.
  2. In all three cases, he came to preach a message bound to cause confusion and misunderstanding.
  3. In all three cases, he came to preach a message of simplicity, that he wants people to follow freely when incapable of doing so.
  4. In all three cases, he should have known better, he should have known what people are really like: "Thou hast been fairly warned of it, but evidently to no use, since thou has rejected the only means which could make mankind happy; fortunately at thy departure Thou has delivered the task to us..."

 

How should Jesus have known? How should Daniel have known?

Whom should they have listened to learn what people really like?

 
 

 

 

Citation: Weithman, P. (2006, September 19). Lecture 24 Notes. Retrieved November 23, 2009, from Notre Dame OpenCourseWare Web site: http://ocw.nd.edu/philosophy/introduction-to-philosophy/lectures/lecture-24-notes.
Copyright 2009, by the Contributing Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Creative Commons License