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The Spirit of Things: 4 April  2004  - A Letter to Jesus

[This is the print version of story
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/spirit/stories/s1077194.htm]

Rachael Kohn: Hello, I'm Rachael Kohn and this is The Spirit of
Things.

CHOIR

Rachael Kohn: It's Holy Week, the time of year for confident
professions of the faith by Christians. They are the lucky ones,
untroubled or unaware of the discoveries by New Testament scholars,
which have cast doubt on the traditional figure of Jesus as the Christ.
One of them is the internationally renowned New Testament scholar, Gerd
Ludermann. He decided to go public about his loss of faith, and wrote
'A letter to Jesus', which he published in his book, The Great
Deception.


Dear Lord Jesus,

That is how I have addressed you since my childhood, and that is what I
have said for years as a grace before meals ('Come, Lord Jesus, be
our guest ...'). I have kept saying another prayer ('Lord Jesus,
Son of the living God, have mercy on me') every evening as a magical
formula, although I didn't really know why I was doing so. But it is
precisely for that reason that calling you 'Lord Jesus' has left
such a deep impression on me.

I have also still gone on praying to you like this as the Lord Jesus in
later times out of habit, thoughtlessness and anxiety, although I had
long known that you were quite different from what my parents, my
teachers and my pastor gave me to understand.

You've become quite strange to me as a person whom I can address. For
you didn't say or do most of the things which the Bible tells us that
you said or did. Moreover you aren't at all the one depicted by the
Bible and the church tradition. You weren't without sin and you
aren't God's Son. You didn't at all want to die for the sins of
the world. And what was particularly painful for me, you didn't
institute the Eucharist which for years I celebrated every Sunday in
memory of you.


Rachael Kohn: That's an excerpt of 'A Letter to Jesus', which New
Testament scholar, Gerd Ludemann published in 1998. It plunged him into
controversy at the University of Gottingen in Germany, which
immediately acted to remove him from the theological faculty.

His case became a cause celebre among scholars of antiquity around the
world. Books were published about it, and the prestigious journal,
Religion, devoted an entire edition to it. Ludemann's case raises
many questions, especially whether personal faith is necessary to be a
good scholar. The greatest irony is that the Theological Faculty at
Gottingen was where the pioneers of the historical study of the Bible
began in the 19th century.

I visited Gerd in his office in Gottingen. Above his desk hung a
picture of David Freidrich Strauss who wrote the first Life of Jesus in
1835.

Gerd Ludemann welcome to The Spirit of Things.

Gerd Ludemann: Thank you very much.

Rachael Kohn: Gerd, as a scholar of the New Testament, and early
Christianity, you stand firmly in the Protestant tradition of the
historical critical analysis of the Bible. Now that field is associated
with great names such as David Friedrich Strauss, Julius Wellhausen,
and Joachim Jeremias. How would you explain or how would you describe
the importance of that tradition?

Gerd Ludemann: The tradition is firmly rooted in the Enlightenment and
the Enlightenment created a completely new world both in terms of
cosmology and also what is known about antiquity. They didn't believe
what the sources said but they started to examine the value of the
sources, and in the pursuit of examining the value of the sources, a
completely new world emerged, both the world of antiquity and the
modern world, and Enlightenment created a new standard of knowledge,
and after that also of living.

Rachael Kohn: What was the impact in terms of the value of the New
Testament as a revealed text?

Gerd Ludemann: The Reformation thought of the New Testament as the word
of God, and Martin Luther made a difference between for example the
letters of James and the letters of Paul, but still he trusted in the
historical work of the New Testament. Historical criticism started its
work and claimed that none of the authors that wrote the gospels, and
those of the letters, are the authors that really wrote them, and that
of course created a stir so that people were wondering whether one
could trust the New Testament at all, and that was the crisis for the
word of God.

Rachael Kohn: In terms of your own analysis of the New Testament, you
too have been sifting it for authentic sayings, as opposed to the
inauthentic sayings of Jesus.

Gerd Ludemann: Well indeed. First I examined the Resurrection of Jesus,
because I was told by my church, and by the confession of the church,
that the risen Lord is the Lord of the universe, and I wrote a book
about the Resurrection, had to conclude that Jesus didn't rise, that
his body rotted away and that Resurrection meant the vision of the
risen one, that is a vision, a dream. And nobody will trust his or her
dream, so I had to abandon that approach of theology to trust in the
risen one, and I turned to Jesus, and thought, Well, if he didn't
rise, there's a possibility that the authority of Jesus' words and
deeds might be the basis of future faith.

So I was looking for a new way of believing or remaining a believer.
And I had to conclude that roughly 85% of the words of Jesus actually
go back to the community that made these words up and don't go back
to Jesus, which created another crisis. I had to ask Who was Jesus? Why
should Jesus be the basis for my own religion? Because historical
investigation showed that Jesus was a Jew and did not go to the
Gentiles. So basically I had to decide either to follow Jesus and
become a Jew or to respect Jesus as a Jew of his days and abandon
Christianity, or at least traditional Christianity, and that's what I
did.

Rachael Kohn: Let's look at some of the things which you did find in
the text. For example, your work has often focused on the divergent
sects in the early Christian period. What did you find there?

Gerd Ludemann: I found that the earliest form of Christianity was sort
of Ebionite Christianity that later in the 2nd century was considered
to be heretical.

Rachael Kohn: What do you mean by Ebionite?

Gerd Ludemann: Ebionite means that's a translation of the Hebrew
ebion,the poor, that's an honorific title of the earliest community,
so they were the poor that Jesus said 'Blessed are the poor because
you will get the Kingdom of Heaven', or whatever. But that form of
Christianity was unable to survive, at least to become the majority
opinion. It was declared heretical and was living on in the various
sects across the Jordan River.

Rachael Kohn: What was the form that did rise to ascendancy?

Gerd Ludemann: Well it was a very complicated process. First of all the
original form of Christianity was replaced by a form of Jacobite or
James Christianity, the brother of Jesus, can you imagine that, who
didn't believe in Jesus during his lifetime? Took over, because he
was a brother of Jesus, and nobody can really explain his rise to
power. At least he was more powerful than Peter, the first disciple of
Jesus and he was more powerful and more influential than Paul, the real
founder of Christianity, and that now answers your question, Paul was
the one who organised the Gentile mission and a mixture of Gentile
Christianity and Jewish Christianity then developed into the early
Catholic church. It's a complicated process, but I would say Paul,
the founder of Christianity who brought things together and who thought
it through. Paul, who didn't know Jesus by the way.

Rachael Kohn: Now that combined Jewish and Pauline community is quite
interesting for the reader of the New Testament, since it contains
quite a degree of antipathy, hostility toward Jews.

Gerd Ludemann: Well it had to, because let's try to make a case, a
strong case for that. In Antioch the Christians or the Jewish
Christians around Stephen, names like Philip come to our mind, formed a
community of eight together with Gentiles because they believed that in
Christ there's new creation and all the differences overcome. So when
they ate with Gentiles without caring what they ate, they sort of
abandoned their Jewish mother religion, though if you had asked them
they would have said, 'f course, we are the true Jews, OK?' So the
other Jews, also James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, observed
that and sent people, messengers, warning them not to do it. And Paul
was part of that process of that group, and Paul was the one who
thought it through and maintained or thought that Jews should eat with
Gentiles. So he was the one who put a spin on it.

Rachael Kohn: Where then did the rather vicious critique of Jews
emerge? Was it from Paul, or was it from Jesus himself?

Gerd Ludemann: Not from Jesus, no. He talked to Pharisees and they
invited him. He may have had some enemies but he was pro-Jewish, he had
no problems with the law, so Paul was the one, and Paul was dealing
with his own pathology I think, with his own problems and formulated
that what he was suffering from. There was his problem with the law
that he thought that others would have.

Rachael Kohn: Well I guess it begs the question then Where do those
texts in the Bible come from? How do we read them? How do you discern
texts that are authentic from those that are inauthentic?

Gerd Ludemann: It depends. Let's talk about the Gospels. There we
have to make a decision, what is the earliest Gospel, and we have to
determine that Matthew and Luke were using Mark, so we have to read
them side by side and try to determine the tendencies of that
tradition.

For example, anything that's very hostile to Jews is most likely a
product of the community after 70, OK? But something which is very
offensive, something which a later community would never ascribe to
Jesus is most likely going back to Jesus. When being with prostitutes
for example, no Christian would have invented that. By a very cautious
and careful study of the documents of the gospel, we most likely arrive
at a judgement as to the development of the traditions, and to what
Jesus really said and did. That's the Gospels. When I go to Paul, we
have 13 Pauline letters, we should read them side by side, study the
language and result is that only 7 of these letters go back to Paul.
All the others are using a very different language.

Now we have 7 authentic letters and now we have to get a sequence, a
chronological sequence for these letters, and here scholarship has
arrived at the solution that 1 Thessalonians is the earliest extant
letter, and the last letter well it's probably Romans. But in that
case I'm not so sure. So it's a great discovery which everybody who
has some time to read can hope for, and the history of historical
critical scholarship of the last 250 years is a very exciting one.

Rachael Kohn: Well indeed. Where is that scholarship being pushed ahead
most? Is it still in Germany or has the laurel been passed to America
and the Jesus Seminar?

Gerd Ludemann: Well my suspicion is that historical critical
scholarship right now is not very active, because the churches have a
hard time to live with it.

The people that I teach will not be good pastors unless they forget
everything, most everything that I told them, because come on, the
church, you think that the word of God is being preached and now
somebody is learning in my cause, that most of what they preach about,
Jesus really didn't say, and I've seen no pastor who is telling his
or her community when he says, or she says, 'Jesus is not really
Jesus, it's Jesus made up by Early Christians'. So historical
scholarship or straightforward critical historical scholarship, leads
to confusion in the church, and there we have a big, big problem. For
that reason, new ways of looking at texts are more sympathetic to
churches. So I think historical critical scholarship is in a deep
crisis right now.

Rachael Kohn: That's interesting because the Jesus Seminar is very
well known for its critical work on trying to discern the authentic
sayings of Jesus. Bob Funk has been heading that ship, as it were, and
they awarded you with a very special prize in 1999, the David Friedrich
Strauss Medal; does that symbolise something of the merging of German
scholarship with contemporary American scholarship in this regard?

Gerd Ludemann: Well I was very proud to be awarded that medal, but
I'm also a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, but I hold a minority
opinion.

Most of the Jesus Seminar fellows think that Jesus was not an
apocalyptic teacher, so they think that Jesus was a great wisdom
teacher, and that helps them to actually preach Jesus, because you can
go to the pulpit and say Jesus was a great teacher. My opinion is, as a
minority opinion but as a majority opinion among international
scholars, that Jesus expected a Kingdom of God to happen during his own
lifetime, and that he, well, he deceived himself. And I think somebody
who deceived himself and deceived his disciples cannot be the basis of
worship.

Rachael Kohn: Wasn't that the view that Albert Schweitzer also wrote
in his Life of Jesus?

Gerd Ludemann: Exactly, and I think basically Albert Schweitzer is
right, but that is creating a problem for the community of believers. I
mean the mainstream Protestant churches, I'm not talking about the
Unitarians, and the Jesus Seminar is teaching a different Jesus, they,
or they, I mean I like the Jesus Seminar and I'm a member again, but
their way of teaching or telling people what Jesus said makes it very
easy to preach about Jesus because she didn't commit self-deception,
he was a great wisdom teacher.

Rachael Kohn: How else would you describe Jesus' characteristics?

Gerd Ludemann: Well first of all please keep in mind he was unable to
write, he was unable to read, he was a boy from the village of Galilee,
a nature boy or something like that, OK? He was so much in touch with
people that he was even unable to see that there's some other
intellects who would ask him some very embarrassing questions. See he
was totally in his religion, a very original person, sympathetic, able
to draw a great crowd, but who talked to God as his father, which would
be a very strange way, because I would say whoever calls God his or her
own father, cannot be taken seriously.

Rachael Kohn: Well many people seem to have.

Gerd Ludemann: It's just so self-centred. I mean how in the world can
you take it seriously that somebody called God, his or her own father?
So he was self-centred, he had to be because he didn't know enough
about the great word, the wisdom, and he never talked to any
philosopher who had studied logic.

Rachael Kohn: So the idea of him being a rabbi is not authentic?

Gerd Ludemann: No, he belonged to a low class, he was a carpenter and a
very original prophetic person but again, he not only called God his
father but he also thought to know the will of God. I wouldn't call
him a fanatic but it's very strange that he knows exactly what God
wanted, come on. Again, I'm just stunned and that just doesn't
allow me to regard him as my hero, as somebody who could tell me
anything.

Rachael Kohn: What are the things that he didn't do?

Gerd Ludemann: He didn't go for example to Sepphoris, he could have
got some education, he didn't engage into serious dialogue with
Pagans, Gentiles.

Rachael Kohn: Did he institute the Eucharist?

Gerd Ludemann: Well no, he didn't institute the Eucharist because he
was a Jew, a teacher, a storyteller, and as a Jew he of course would
never think that somebody could drink blood or anything. And remember
that he, according to the Gospels, instituted the Eucharist at a time
when he wasn't even dead. The Eucharist presupposes his death for us,
so it's all construction by the Early church. That's very sad.


You drove out demons like a magician and saw in this the advent of the
kingdom of God. You had intimate contact with the devil and finally saw
him falling like lightning from heaven. You expected the collapse of
the whole world in the near future, and this was finally to give place
to the new kingdom of God.

But none of this is any use: you too died, in the prime of life. You
too drank the cup of death, indeed had to drink it - in a way that
you didn't foresee. Despite profound experiences with your God, whom
you called a father to be trusted, and from whom you expected almost
everything, your hopes for the future also died. They clashed with
brutal reality. At the latest on the cross you had to learn what it
means to become a godforsaken victim. And had not your followers, who
were understandably inspired by you, proclaimed belief in your
resurrection, all your words and deeds would have been blown away like
leaves by the wind.


Rachael Kohn: That's from 'A Letter to Jesus' by the New Testament
scholar Gerd Ludemann. When it was published the letter got him into
trouble with his Theological faculty at the University of Gottingen in
Germany. But should personal faith have anything to do with one's
scholarship?

This is The Spirit of Things on ABC Radio National, with my guest, Gerd
Ludemann. He's the author of several books, including the 700-page
tome, Jesus After Two Thousand Years, and The Great Deception.

CHOIR

Rachael Kohn: Gerd, in your now famous book which I believe was
published in 1998, in English called The Great Deception, it begins
with 'A Letter to Jesus' in which you declare your loss of faith.

Gerd Ludemann: Oh yes, that was because of that very letter that I
almost lost my job. The Church of Lower Saxony asked the government to
fire me and the dispute is still going on at least I was removed from
the Theological curriculum, and still belonging to the Theological
faculty but have no academic rights whatsoever, so that very Letter to
Jesus created a whole stir, and they thought of it as the public
acknowledgement that I'm no longer a Christian, but they never
defined what a Christian is, and in fact the press brought that up. So
the press played a major role in the church taking me to, well, trying
to fire me. And that's now since 1998, it's five years, and it's
still before the court, and we will see it will take another five years
until the Supreme Court will render a final decision.

Rachael Kohn: Your situation has been compared to that of Hans Kung,
who some years ago was removed from teaching theology at the Catholic
university of Tubigen because of his views which were at variance with
the Vatican. Is that comparison a valid one?

Gerd Ludemann: No, he settled with the church and the university, he
did not take them to court. I didn't settle, I will never settle
because I'm a Protestant and I'm bringing, or trying to represent
the best tradition of free Protestantism and Enlightenment, and so
there's a legacy, I've a legacy to fulfil.

He's a Catholic, there's no legacy to Enlightenment, he remains a
Catholic, but I have a completely different view, but from a juridical,
legal standpoint, it's the same thing. The Catholic church objected
to his teaching, which they can do. It's the law that the church can
veto and can withdraw an approval. The same was done to me for the
first time to a Protestant Professor of Theology.

What happened to Kung is happening almost every year in Germany, when
Professors get married, when they write something, we have eight or
nine Professors of Catholic theology who are not so known as Kung is,
but I'm the first Protestant Professor of Theology and hopefully the
last who has difficulties.

Rachael Kohn: But Gerd, some would see it as perfectly sensible that a
Christian theological faculty would remove someone who publicly
declares a lack of faith in the Christian God.

Gerd Ludemann: I disagree. We have a theological faculty that is paid
for by the State. The church is not paying a penny for this faculty. So
I'm an employee of the State. The only reason for removing me would
be I think if I informed the students incorrectly as to what the church
believes.

I will always teach my students what the church believes on the basis
of confession and introduce them to Christianity and I think you can
compare to a situation of a non-Marxist teaching at a Marxist seminary.
And I think a non-Marxist in some cases can be a better scholar on
Marxism than a Marxist is. This has to do with education and
scholarship, not with belief.

I think belief of a faith is something else. The only thing that people
could accuse me of is that as a citizen of Germany, of democracy, I
have an opinion about things, and when students ask me 'Are you a
believer for example? Do you believe that Jesus will come back at the
end of time on the clouds of heaven?' I have to say 'No.' 'Do
you believe that you will rise after death, will be with Jesus?' I
have to say 'No.' And the hypocrisy in all of this is that in most
cases my colleagues and others would also deny Jesus coming back on the
clouds of heaven etc. So I'm pretty certain that what I am doing is
the right thing to do.

Rachael Kohn: But didn't the man who invented virtually invented
historical criticism of the Bible, Julius Wellhausen, change faculties
in 1882 when he realised he didn't want to train students to become
ministers. Isn't that option open to you?

Gerd Ludemann: That would have been open to me, though the
philosophical faculty did not want me. In my case, the President of the
University made his decision, he would have liked to transfer me to the
Philosophical Faculty, but they for an unknown reason said No. So I was
not faced with the possibility.

What I could have done is, I could have tried to become part of the
Philosophical Faculty, that's what people told me, and a former
Bishop in fact, tried to talk me into it. But I declined to do so,
because I'm a New Testament scholar and trained in that tradition. I
want to be judged on the basis of my scholarly work, analysing the
Gospels, analysing the Letters of Paul, that's a great tradition,
which is at stake here, and I want to remain what I was, in the place
where I was called and what I can do.

So there's no reason for me to go to the Philosophical Faculty
because in the German system there are no Chairs of New Testament in
the Philosophical Faculty. Wellhausen's decision was his decision,
and he remained a Christian person. He prayed after that, even. So
Wellhausen is a special case, and that was his decision. I didn't
want to do it.

Rachael Kohn: Doesn't this call into question the relationship
between theology and scientific knowledge. Isn't theology and the
kind of historical criticisms that you're doing, in some ways
antithetical?

Gerd Ludemann: Yes I would say it excludes one another. There's a
dogmatic method and the historical method, and if you ask me I would
wish that theology turn into a philosophy of religion, or leave the
university. That would be my suggestion, and get all the empirical,
historical departments of the Theological Faculty - Old Testament, New
Testament, History of Religions -together to form a new curriculum, and
Theology indeed if it is dogmatic Theology, meaning deducing from the
dogmas of the church, certain truths, it has no legitimate place in the
university. But the church will always try to keep it there, and it's
the political power of the church that will keep it there for some time
to come.

Rachael Kohn: I think that this problem is somewhat solved or addressed
in many Western universities with the establishment of Religious
Studies Departments, which owe no allegiance to any particular church.

Gerd Ludemann: But there are no Religious Studies departments in
Germany, or very few, and if there are Religious Studies Departments
then the appointment of some of the Professors needs the agreement of
the church. So we do not have that tradition, and one peculiar aspect
of the German situation is that religion is taught at the schools.

Article 7 of our basic law says that religion has been taught on the
basis of the confessions of the various churches, so we need teachers
of religion. But now what happens is this: there's Catholic religion
at a school and Protestant religion, and if there are two departments,
a Catholic faculty and a Protestant faculty in one place, as a Catholic
you cannot take a course with the Protestants, and the Protestants are
not allowed to take a course with the Catholics and getting credit for
it. So the organisation and the power struggle of the church is
responsible for this idiotic schizophrenic separating of studies that
belong together. It's a political game, and the less popular the
church gets, the more they see to it that the teaching of religion is
not combined.

Rachael Kohn: That's very interesting because while you're pointing
to the loss of the faith as it were by the general population, didn't
you also mention to me earlier that there are almost 1,000 students
studying Theology in this university?

Gerd Ludemann: We had 1700 students in the '70s when I began, less in
the '80s, and now it's only 33%, much less study Theology. The
number has dramatically decreased and the churches have lost members,
and losing it all the time, but there are agreements or treaties
between State and church, so the Theological faculty is receiving many
favours from the State because of the power of the church. Again, we
have Catholic and Protestant faculties, and it will not change unless
the legal structure of this whole system is abolished, and one of my
contributions will be to destabilise the system which makes serious
scholarship impossible in the long run.

Rachael Kohn: Can you just tell me what is the state of your case at
the moment?

Gerd Ludemann: I have lost the first instance but now I have more
successful. I succeeded in being admitted to the next court; we have
three different courts, a lower court, then the higher court and the
supreme court, so it was quite difficult to convince the judges of the
next higher court that the case needs to be reconsidered and they in
fact have admitted that there may be a problem with their earlier
decision of the other court. So it will probably take a while to get it
through the three stages of legal system in Germany.

Rachael Kohn: Gerd, what has been the ramifications, what has been the
impact for you of this punitive measure by the university? Because I
read that there was some boycotts.

Gerd Ludemann: Well my doctorate students had to look for another
Doctor or Father, so I could not help them to get their degree, and I
lost half of my money that I had. I came to Gottingen in 1983 with a
Chair in New Testament, and then turned an offer down from the
University of Bonn in 1993, and my money, or what I had, was increased,
I lost all of that. So I'm basically back to, well, to somebody who
is helping me for a couple of hours, but they were unable to cut my
salary, I've a full salary, which is good because I have a family of
four children to get through grade school. But students are no longer
coming to me because they get no credit from me and it's not good for
them to be associated with me.

The press has written about me and you can imagine once you have a
certain reputation, nobody will be able remove that. What I have, I
have senior students, people older than 55, with whom I'm working.
We're doing workshops and many are coming to these workshops, so my
emphasis, since I have no students, no regular course, I have to offer
regular courses, but most of these courses are just not happening or
taking place because nobody's coming, my emphasis is adult education
and research. I'm doing a lot of books, but the impact is that I'm
very isolated, I have very few people to talk to. I have no dialogue
that's going on. That's a loneliness which is very bitter.
Sometimes I don't have to talk, I'm not talking, I'm condemned to
be without speech. I've only my pen to write.

CHOIR

Rachael Kohn: If I can get back to your book The Great Deception, one
of the strong points in it that you end on is the role of the church in
promoting an anti-Jewish teaching, and that seems to be one of the
bitterest pills really for you. And I was thinking about you as a
German who also spends half the year, or quite frequently spends time
in American universities. I wonder to what extent being a German who
has to cope with the impact of the Holocaust in particular, Germany is
one of the few countries in Europe that has very publicly dealt with,
or addresses its role in the Holocaust. I wondered to what extent that
shaped you and your work.

Gerd Ludemann: Well I learned about anti-Judaism in the New Testament
not during my student days here at Gottingen, not even during my
graduate studies in Gottingen, but in the United States when I was
Research Assistant of W.D. Davies, and the reading E.P. Sanders' great
book Paul and Palestinian Judaism helped me to get it into perspective
and to see it, and also to reorganise my own work, because looking at
anti-Judaism in the New Testament, has led me ultimately to the
decision that the Early Church had to be anti-Jewish in order to
survive, but that anti-Jewish Early Church defined what is Christian.
And this anti-Judaism of the New Testament I think should make it
impossible for anybody to call him or herself a Christian.

So that's a problem, and as you said, German churches have
acknowledged it, have addressed that problem, but they are still
Christians, and they try to re-read the New Testament in a way in which
we shouldn't read it. And so they address it, but they worship and
adore the same people, like Luther, who was an anti-Semite. So they are
not drawing the consequence of all of that.

And secondly, the result of anti-Judaism should not be only public
declaration but the result, the consequences should have been the
creation of Jewish chairs within Theological faculties. But our legal
system does not allow to create a Jewish Chair filled by a Jew, because
the Professor has to be Christian, has to be baptised. Somebody from
Israel who is an expert on Jesus could not get a Doctorate, not even a
degree in the Theological faculty because he or she must be baptised. I
would say that's lip service which is being paid. The real thing
which should ensure Jewish studies should have been the creation of
Chairs, but that's not possible.

Rachael Kohn: So what would you see is the future for Christianity? Is
there one?

Gerd Ludemann: John Shelby Spong has written a book, either
Christianity will change or it will die, that's what I would say. It
will die so, I am sceptical, it will not die, it will be the same, so
I'm not so optimistic. I would say the main question would be Will
there be a religion at all? My studies have demonstrated I think that
religion cannot be based on history, not based on facts. Religion is
based in something else, not the resurrection of Jesus, not in his
death, it has to be based on something else that something else has to
be re-addressed and has to be found.

For a time I was translating Gnostic texts and thought for a time that
sort of new mysticism would be a way to allow one to be religious again
without losing insights and without denying any scientific knowledge,
but I'm trying to find it. So I'm looking for the something which
could ground my faith or my view in religious matters. That's I think
important, so I'm not a pure rationalist, I'm something else, and I
think religion under stood in terms of emotions or spirituality is
something that we should address if we talk about the new religion.

Rachael Kohn: Isn't that precisely what the Jesus Seminar has been
trying to do in terms of grounding a future for Christianity and the
sayings of Jesus for example?

Gerd Ludemann: But still I don't know whether that's what they
wanted. You should ask them. But that's would be still basing one's
faith on the sayings, on facts, on something which somebody said and
not basing the faith in experience. I thin we have to talk about
experience. I would say you could only base your life on something that
you have experienced, and experience e has to do with the present, not
with the past.

Rachael Kohn: Does religion necessarily leave its imprint in history?
Can t ever absent itself from history? It always leaves a legacy, does
it not, for the next generation.

Gerd Ludemann: When we talk about history we're not only talking
about two generations, we're talking about millennia, and
Christianity has certainly left its imprint, but today we're living
in an age where the world has become very small and the exchange of
ideas is rapid etc., and our value system, at least my value system is
based on certain ideas that we have from the Enlightenment and which is
incorporated into most basic laws of Western democracies.

So that's one of my bases in terms of value. I don't need a
religion to ensure that, that people are created equal and should have
the same chance etc. I don't need religion. So I trust that our
political systems will keep the work on the basic values or the basic
rights of men intact, so there's an ongoing process, and for example,
we are now talking about the Constitution for Europe, and you see, we
have almost the same values, the same laws that are incorporated into
the Constitution of the United States.

I don't need a religion, I don't even need God for that thing. What
I need religion for is I think, and I must talk personally, fulfilling
my desire to go back to my origins, where I'm coming from. That's
something that cannot be answered by ethics, that's something
emotional, spirituality, whatever, and I don't think that that type
of religion that I'm talking about doesn't even need a church, and
doesn't want to leave an imprint, it's my religion and we can talk
about it I'm sure it will be addressed again and again, and I don't
care to leave an imprint for that to an institution. That time I think
is over because our society is organised the way it is.

Rachael Kohn: Gerd Ludemann, finally, what is the future then for a New
Testament scholar?

Gerd Ludemann: Investigating and testing the text again and again and
mainly being in charge of keeping fundamentalism in check. It always
wants to use the New Testament to be applied to the present, so I think
that's a very positive function that a New Testament scholar can do,
keeping fundamentalism in check, and all of us have the desire to get
new insights, we have new sources, new discoveries for example, the
Gospel of Thomas, and we want to put the New Testament in perspective,
and relate the New Testament documents through these newly discovered
documents, so a New Testament scholar must and will interpret the New
Testament and the new insights about the environment of the New
Testament to the public audience, because they want to know.

Rachael Kohn: But certainly fundamentalists won't be interested in
reading your works or taking them seriously if you disown the
fundamentals of the faith.

Gerd Ludemann: In my own family we have in America my son-in-law for
example, is going to a church that has fundamental tendencies, or is
fundamentalistic, and my policy as a father-in-law is to let him ask
questions...That's his decision and maybe fundamentalism is a
reminder what Christianity once meant, because Paul also was a
fundamentalist, and Martin Luther, all of them, believed literally in
what the text said and something more than that. And from the 1st
century, understanding of the Biblical text meant understanding and
literally, but also adding some symbolic dimension to it.

For example, when Luke is telling his story about the ascension, Jesus
is rising to the clouds, and is disappearing, and he thought that that
happened. At the same time it has some symbolic, deeper, or more
symbolic meaning which the fundamentalists don't see. So our
challenge as living in the post modern world is to recreating and
changing what Christianity once taught, and that's a big problem. So
fundamentalists are a reminder of what Christians once believed. So
that's I think very useful.

Rachael Kohn: Gerd Ludemann, thank you so much for speaking to me on
The Spirit of Things.

Gerd Ludemann: You're very welcome, Rachael.


But if you really should return on the clouds of heaven, I already look
forward to getting to know you at last. And I am convinced, even if I
no longer pray to you and no longer believe in you, that I will have
your sympathy and that you will not annihilate me for my unbelief, as
according to Bible and creed you really should But until then, as far
as religion is concerned, there must be a final end to things between
us - for the reasons which I have mentioned to you.


CHOIR

Rachael Kohn: A ray of hope perhaps, from the man who's bared his
soul in a way many New Testament scholars have dared not. In Germany at
any rate, they'd lose their jobs.

That's been a conversation with Gerd Ludemann, in his office at the
University of Gottingen in Germany. If you want to follow up on
Gerd's work, his books include Jesus after 2,000 Years and The Great
Deception. A longer list can be found on our website.

The program was produced by me and Geoff Wood, with technical
production by Judy Rapley.

Readings from The Great Deception were by Robert Alexander.

Next week, it's the Immaculate Perception, how the image of Mary the
mother of Jesus is being challenged and reconfigured by a leading
Catholic theologian, Elizabeth Johnson, and how Australian women are
responding. That's The Spirit of Things with me, Rachael Kohn.

Guests on this program:
Gerd Ludemann
made his reputation as Professor of New Testament at the University of
Gottingen. He was removed from the Theology Faculty at the University
by reason of the content of his academic writing and lecturing on the
history and theology of earliest Christianity. He was expelled from his
post as professor of New Testament and assigned a professorship of the
history and literature of Early Christianity. His books include
Resurrection of Jesus and many other studies in the New Testament and
early Christianity.

Publications:
Jesus After Two Thousand Years: What He Really Said and Did
Author: Gerd Ludemann
Publisher: London: SCM Press, 2000 and Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books,
2001
The Great Deception: And What Jesus Really Said and Did
Author: Gerd Ludemann
Publisher: SCM Press, 1998
Faith, Truth, and Freedom: The Expulsion of Prof. Gerd Ludemann From
the Theology Faculty at Gottingen University
Author: Jacob Neusner Ed.
Publisher: Global Publications, 2002

Further information:
Gerd Ludemann's Homepage
http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~gluedem/eng/00con.htm
The Life of Jesus : A Brief Assessment
An essay based on the concluding section of Ludemann's book Jesus After
Two Thousand Years: What He Really Said and Did.
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Ludemann_Life0fJesus.htm
Faith, Truth and Freedom
A symposium on the expulsion of Professor Gerd Ludemann from the
Theology Faculty at Gottingen University.
http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~gluedem/eng/perfacefaithtruthandfreedom.htm